"Hey there! Do you have 10 minutes to fill out this survey? It would really help us out!"

How many times have you seen a message like this?

And how many times have you actually filled out the survey?

Not many, I’m guessing.

There’s a much better way: micro-surveys.

Micro-surveys have extremely high response rates, and you can get from question to responses within hours to days.

So, what exactly are micro-surveys?

Get nearly instant feedback with micro-surveys

The best way to understand what a micro-survey is, is by understanding why the response rates for these type of surveys are so high.

First of all, they’re short. Really short.

One question.

Usually with one follow up optional question.

That’s it.

No, “Hey, could you fill out this survey?”

You jump right to the question and make it really easy to answer.

Do you see how easy it would be to answer any one of these surveys?

It would take just a few seconds.

No need to opt in.

The second reason micro-surveys get such high response rates is they’re asked in context to what you’re currently doing.

You have used a new feature a few times and you get an in-app prompt to ask what you think about it.

When asked in context it’s extremely easy to give feedback.

Micro-surveys are easy to respond for this reason.

You might also see micro-surveys showing up in your email after doing a certain action in your product.

Because micro-surveys are so short and asked in context they’re incredibly easy and fast to answer. This results in a great response rate. You can reach confidence in a survey in a matter of hours or days.

Continuous Insights: Keep a pulse on your customer experience

In addition to one-off surveys, micro-surveys are incredibly powerful way to keep a pulse on your product’s UX.

Are your customers becoming happier and happier over time as you release product improvements and features?

This is such a light-weight research method that brings continuous insights throughout your users journey, not just when they first sign up or on a per-project basis.

NPS

Net Promoter Score or NPS is arguably one of the best metrics for customer satisfaction. It is a perfect example of micro-surveys in action.

CSAT

Customer Satisfaction Score or CSAT is another perfect example of micr-surveys. Here’s three variations of this micro-survey:

Product happiness and satisfaction

If you walk into a department store, you’ll likely be greeted by someone at the store asking if they can help you find anything.

If you’re just browsing you won’t take them up on the offer. However, it does make you feel supported and you know that if a question came up you could ask someone.

So, how do you recreate that kind of feeling in your digital product?

Occasionally, send them a micro survey asking how they’re doing.

The response to this can be critical.

If they’re happy you can dive into understanding what’s going well.

If they’re okay they’re not super unhappy yet but not really satisfied. You have an opportunity to fix things. You need to dive into understanding.

And if they’re unhappy you really need to support them.

Targeted, Actionable

Another reason micro surveys are incredibly powerful is that they get right to the point and have a clear actionable outcome. Here are a few examples of extremely targeted and super actionable micro-surveys.

Feature prioritization

Get your customers input on which features they’d most like to see you build next.

Feature feedback

Dive into understanding the UX on a specific feature. I find this particularly helpful if you’re considering putting design and development efforts behind it. This can be a good way to know whether you should invest those resources in a specific feature or not.

Customer Recruitment

If you’re not regularly talking to your customers, you should. But, I get it, it’s hard enough to find time to meet with them, let alone recruit and schedule the interview.  This micro-survey will make it easy for both you and your customers to get from recruitment to jumping on a call.

Customer Empathy

Get to know your customers better so you can serve them better.

A key product differentiator

Micro-surveys are a powerful tool for gathering quick, actionable feedback from users. A few key features about them:

• They have extremely high response rates due to their short length and contextually relevant questions.
• They can be used to keep a pulse on customer experience.
• They are actionable - everything from feature prioritization to recruiting customers for user interviews.

By using micro-surveys, you show that you care about your customers and want to serve them better.

Sign up for Empathetic today and get started with micro surveys. You’ll see results faster than with any other user research method.

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